Is Your Extroverted Darth Leadership Style Sabotaging Your Business?

When you’re an extroverted behavioral style and your teammates are introverted behavioral styles, a common mistake the extroverted style will make is thinking that the introverted style can adapt to an extroverted behavioral style… they can’t.

Having said this, the extroverted behavioral style has to adapt to an introverted behavioral / communication style in order to communicate, lead and motivate them.

If one doesn’t, then the extroverted behavioral style is going to appear as a very extroverted, patriarchal and arrogant style to the introverted behavioral style and what the introvert will do is just shut down.

Hence, the harder the extrovert pushes the less likely the introvert is to respond to their style of communication.

So what your teammates need is a leader that catches them doing things right which segues off the One Minute Manager.

Compliment them on the way they answer the phone or the way they prepared a file, as examples.

The way to improve performance is to let your teammates know in advance that you plan to have a review meeting with them in 10 days to 2 weeks’ time.

Remember, they’re more introverted in their communication style and they do not want to be put on the spot.

Let them know that you’re going to do a review meeting with them and that you’re going to talk about what’s working, what needs to improve and you want their input.

Again, on the spot is not going to work and it won’t create a lot of rapport; it will create a disconnect.

So, back to letting them know that you want to have a review meeting with them in 10 days to 2 weeks’ time …

Let them know that you’re going to talk with them about what’s working well, what needs to improve and what help they need from the company in order to make improvements to go to the next level.

For best results after you talk with them about having a review meeting with them in 10 days to 2 weeks’ time, send them the following questions so that they have them in writing. This enables them to prepare in advance of the review meeting in 10 days to 2 weeks’ time. The questions are:

• What do you like best about your job?
• What do you feel happiest about in respect to the accomplishments that the company has made in the last 90 days?
• What do you like best about the improvements that you have made to your job in the last 90 days?
• What improvements do you believe the company can make going forward?
• What improvements do you believe that you can make going forward?
• What help do you need from the company to help you to do a better job?
• What are the action steps that you can take?

It will set the stage on how to prepare for a quarterly review meeting.

When you’re doing the meeting you let them answer each question first.

You can surely lead the meeting but you ask them, what do you believe is working well?

Let them answer the question.

Give them the time to answer.

I highly recommend that you use a voice recorder for this meeting and then have someone typeset the minutes which is going to integrate what the team has learned through the process and it’s also going to document the action steps.

One thing you’re going to have to understand here is you’re going to need patience. An extroverted behavioral style can appear to be quite impatient and you’re going to feel like you need to hurry this process along and, if you do, the bottom line is the introverted behavioral style is going to feel like a thing and they are just going to shut down.

They’re just going to be workers and they are not going to necessarily contribute.

They’re going to feel like, why should they, because they’re not heard.

This whole process is to allow them to feel like they’re included so that they can get heard.

On a day-to-day basis, start the first meeting of the day by asking them what their priorities are for the day.

Allow them the time to answer.

Remember, the extroverted behavioral style has a mind that has a Pentium 12 that is going to think in a microsecond; allow the introverted behavioral style time to think and contribute.

Once they’ve contributed, then say, hey, I’ve got some ideas I’d like to share about how we can re-prioritize the day to best suit our clients’ needs.

Now it becomes a collaborative approach.

This strategy works a lot better than walking in and saying, do this, do this, do this, do this… Again, the introverted behavioral style is just going to feel like a thing and they’re not going to respond to you. Worst case scenarios: they’re either going to start to sabotage their work because they don’t feel acknowledged so they will attract recognition in a negative way, or eventually they will just quit.